Saturday, March 22, 2014

A melomel story

My strawberry melomel is near ready for bottling. The yeast are mostly sleeping now, having done what they could with a gallon of honey and a few pounds of strawberries.

Last year's melomel, much of it gone now

The airlock has quieted down. Very little carbon dioxide bubbles out anymore.

The strawberries were not yet strawberries this time last year--as evanescent as my last breath, and made of the same. The honey had yet to be harvested by the honeybees of last summer, all dead now.

We're all of the same stuff, put together into the wonderfully wild beings that bless earth by the grace of the sun, then broken down again, back into pieces to be used again.

Fresh fish in Dublin,no doubt reassembled by now

The sun has returned, the bees a bit wobbly as they waggle out of their hives to gather some of the sugary stuff spun together by plants from our breath, our gasping machines, and an occasional carboy of homebrew.

Our honey is about as local as honey can get, and the strawberries likely came from within a county or two. There's a real good chance that the mead we pour in June will have pieces of us from winters past.

2 comments:

I know what the technical definition of Spring is, but it feels like it's been Spring for a month here. The bees are buzzing around our orange trees and the backyard smells amazing with all the blossoms.

Joel asked me a good question about Spring. "If it's about the light, then shouldn't we have Spring at least a day or two earlier than people who live north of us?"